Electricity access and post 2015 governance indicators

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12/09/2014

Electricity access and post 2015 governance indicators

I am in Albania at the moment and one of the areas of interest is power. No: not politics. Electricity. A huge issue in development.

Because electricity is all about light. And light is a key to productivity, well-being, and wealth.

See the following NBER working paper from Brown University professors J. Vernon Henderson, Adam Storeygard, and David N. Weil. They suggested that one could get a good sense of a country’s income and well being by looking at the amount of light visible from outer space.

As in the following photo.

I’m also reminded that light and transparency are related concepts, and we constantly hold that more transparency leads to less corruption but more accountability and trust. These are key issues in governance and development and make me think more seriously than ever about the importance of electricity in development.

So much so that I think we should be promoting an electricity access indicator in the post 2015 governance indicators. Yes, I don’t like the idea of governance indicators—but you will have read that if an indicator is chosen I perfer that it focus on functional things. I have mentioned child registration as an example, and road deaths, and a few others. But electricity access is also a good one.

I think electricity access could be an effective measure of good governance because:

In most countries governments are the ones authorized to make light happen.
They manage the large investments required to make electricity accessible.
They control the regulatory framework around this issue.
They often have interests and influence in production and distribution of electricity.

Put simply: In most countries, if governments do not exercise the authority they are given well, such that governance is lacking, their countries stay dark. And darkness is not good.

Posted at 08:41 AM in Post 2015 indicators (my thoughts) | Permalink

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